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Quick Links Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak Is a Love Letter to Victorian Gothic Horror Crimson Peak Originally Had Two Different Actors in the Lead Roles Crimson Peak Is the Haunted Mansion From Guillermo Del Toro Audiences Never Got to See

Guillermo del Toro's 2015 film Crimson Peak might not be as well remembered as some of his other films, but it's a case study of Gothic romance and mystery. The film stars Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, and Mia Wasikowska in a disturbing and doomed love story between Wasikowska's Edith Cushing and Hiddleston's Thomas Sharpe. In true del Toro fashion, it's a movie that relies heavily on visuals to create the compelling atmosphere its characters inhabit. Overall, its tone feels rather reminiscent of another master of horror, Alfred Hitchcock. Still, del Toro manages to pull off a story that manages both to be an homage and an original. He...

Bram Stoker's novel Dracula has had its fair share of adaptations and off-shoots over the years. The late-Victorian novel built on the Gothic tradition and introduced a now iconic monster: Count Dracula. Horror, as fans know it today, was in its infancy in the late 1800s, and Stoker was one of the first to try his hand at the rising literary form. Stoker could potentially be credited with bringing the vampire myth to the mainstream in Western popular culture. One of the earliest versions of Dracula on-screen was Bela Lugosi's portrayal of the Transylvanian nobleman in 1931's Dracula.

Other actors after Lugosi took on the mantle, like Christopher Lee in 1958, Gary Oldman in 1992, and even Gerard Butler in 2000. But it was Oldman's portrayal in director Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula that became one of the most financially successful and memorable iterations of the famed creature. Changes...

The concept of a mystery focused on a closed circle of suspects goes way back like, all the way back to Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins and has been a continual source of innovation within crime fiction. The closed-space mystery creates a pliable backdrop against which the smallest details become clues. In the 2019 film, Knives Out, all of the conventions of the murder mystery are executed flawlessly as detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) pieces together the very puzzling circumstances of the death of a wealthy mystery author who was found dead the morning after his birthday party.

Exclusive: Euro Gang Entertainment, the company founded by Gianni Nunnari (300) and Simon Horsman (Legacy: The True Story Of The LA Lakers), has entered into a three picture and series deal with German writer-director Marco Kreuzpaintner who most recently co-directed with Roland Emmerich the big-budget 10-part gladiator series, Those About to Die, with Anthony Hopkins.

Alongside Euro Gang, Kreuzpaintner will produce and direct Drood, a series based on the book of the same name by U.S. author Dan Simmons (The Terror). The story revolves around a sinister and mysterious hunt through Victorian London’s perilous underground for a murderous specter, led by none other than Charles Dickens, and his best friend and fellow author, Wilkie Collins.

The second project, Black Vatican, is a contemporary horror series based on an original story by Andrea Nobile and Maurizio Curcio. Kreuzpaintner will direct the pilot penned by Alex Child, where the Pope, possessed by Satan,...

For The Ages

Revered Indian actor Waheeda Rehman, who was accorded the Dadasaheb Phalke award, India’s highest film honor, last year, has donated her personal memorabilia to the Film Heritage Foundation (Fhf) for preservation. Rehman, the 86-year-old grande dame of Indian cinema, has worked with most of the legendary filmmakers of her country during her career and the roles she chose were in films that are considered classics in the annals of Indian cinema. She worked with Guru Dutt in “Pyaasa” (1957) and “Kaagaz Ke Phool” (1959), Satyajit Ray in “Abhijaan” (1962), Basu Bhattacharya in “Teesri Kasam” (1966) and Yash Chopra in “Kabhie Kabhie” (1976), among many other memorable roles.

The donated material includes the saree Rehman wore to the “C.I.D.” premiere in 1956, her photo albums and photographs and lobby cards from “Kaagaz Ke Phool,” “Chaudvin Ka Chand” (1960), “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam” (1962) “C.I.D.,” “Bees Saal Baad” (1962) and “Baat Ek Raat Ki” (1962). The donation was...

This post contains spoilers for The Fall of the House of Usher and other Mike Flanagan works.

Acid raining from the sky, bodies melting into globs of indiscernible flesh, a troubled boy sucking the last bits of breath into his decimated lungs.

These sights and so much more punctuate the climax to the second episode of The Fall of the House of Usher, easily the most ghastly death in a series full of unsettling ends. Any horror filmmaker would be happy to craft such an upsetting scene, but that’s not all that Usher creator Mike Flanagan can do.

Just moments before young Prospero Usher (Sauriyan Sapkota) gets liquified, he’s met by Verna (Carla Gugino), a woman who haunts every member of the Usher family. Apropos of the Edgar Allan Poe story that gives the episode its title “The Masque of the Red Death,” Verna arrives at the rave...

4-day Jeopardy! champion Hannah Wilson had to go against project manager Joe Forti and copy editor Raquel Matta to secure her total winnings of $124,801. However, a close game ended abruptly when a contestant didn’t wager as much as they should have. Going into Double Jeopardy, Hannah had $13,200, Raquel with $3,200, and Joe at $2,200. When the game hit its second Daily Double, Raquel was able to answer the question, “The mysterious Anne Catherick strongly favors a certain color in this novel by Wilkie Collins,” correctly under the Novels category. She made a true Daily Double, multiplying her score to $11,200 against Hannah’s $16,000. Although Raquel got the third Daily Double, she answered incorrectly but was able to cobble her score to stay in the game as the trio headed into Final Jeopardy. Hannah was still in the lead with $26,000, Raquel in second place at $14,400, and Joe with $5,800.+ Jeopardy! Inc. In the Actresses & Their Roles category,...

While the whole premise of the Quantum Leap Project is that wrongs in the past can be set right, Quantum Leap Season 1 Episode 11 takes that to eleven when it takes not one but five leaps to figure out the solution.

Why Ben gets caught in a loop on this specific leap is some pretty bulky plot armor, but it doesn't take away from the brilliance of the execution as he plays detective through multiple perspectives.

It's not a new narrative concept. Ben references Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, while I immediately thought of Wilkie Collins's novel The Moonstone. In more recent times, Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle takes a similar tack.

Of course, the reset to the elevator means Ben isn't able to leave clues for himself to follow. Addison has to be both his sounding board and research device.

It would help if Ben...

Joanna Hogg concludes the story she began with "The Souvenir," and continued in "The Souvenir Part II", with the spooky "The Eternal Daughter." To be clear: this isn't quite a sequel to those films. But at the same time, it is. "The Souvenir" films were autobiographical works in which Honor Swinton Byrne, daughter of Tilda Swinton, played Julie, a fictionalized version of Hogg, while Swinton played Rosalind, a version of Hogg's mother. Now, with "The Eternal Daughter," Swinton is back and pulling double duty — she's playing both Julie and Rosalind this time ("The Souvenir" films were set in the 1980s, while "The Eternal Daughter" is set in the present, which explains while the Julie character is older now).

Once again, Hogg is getting personal. Instead of making a movie about herself, here, she's making a movie about her mother. Sort of. More accurately, she's interrogating herself and asking the question:...

La Place d’une autre (The Place of Another)

Director Aurélia Georges promises to be a breakout in 2021 with her third project La Place d’une autre (The Place of Another), produced by Olivier Père of Arte France Cinema and Emmanuel Barraux of 31 Juin Films. The projects stars Lyna Khoudri (Cesar Winner for Most Promising Newcomer in 2020 for Papicha) , Sabine Azema, Maud Wyler and Laurent Poitrenaux. The film is a loose adaptation of the Wilkie Collins novel The New Magdalen, penned by Georges and Maud Ameline. Georges competed in the Acid lineup with her 2007 debut L’Homme qui marche, where she returned with sophomore feature La fille at le fleuve in 2014.…...

A 14-year-old girl battles for her life and sanity after a deceptive demon invades her psyche in Daphne Byrne. One of several new series at Joe Hill's Hill House Comics imprint at DC, the fourth issue (of six) of Daphne Byrne will be unleashed on April 28th, and ahead of its release, we've been provided with exclusive preview pages to share with Daily Dead readers, along with a new Q&a with writer Laura Marks and artist Kelley Jones.

You can read our Q&a and exclusive preview pages below, and to learn more about Daphne Byrne #4, visit DC Comics and Previews World online.

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions for us, Laura and Kelley, and congratulations on Daphne Byrne! How and when did you come up with the idea for this story?

Laura: Joe Hill approached me and asked if I had an idea for a comic.

The holidays have come early for fans of Tom Hollander, with a plethora of new projects for the English actor who has emerged as one of the season’s favorite scene-stealers. Hollander has proven equally at home in period pieces (“Gosford Park”), wordy farce (“In the Loop”), action blockbusters (two “Pirates of the Caribbean” films), or even acting opposite himself (playing twins in last year’s “Breathe.”)

Hollander is now on screens in two films, giving advice and managing Queen in “Bohemian Rhapsody” and playing editor Sean Ryan to Rosamund Pike’s heroic journalist Marie Colvin in “A Private War.” Later this year he’ll bring his special brand of ambiguous menace to “Bird Box” with Sandra Bullock, which premiered Monday night at AFI Fest. He’ll also be heard as Tabaqui the hyena (don’t call him a jackal!) in “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle,” from his “Breathe” director Andy Serkis.

The BBC-produced “The Woman in White,” premiering on PBS’ “Masterpiece,” turns the oft-adapted Wilkie Collins novel into a five-hour miniseries and creates the most feminist version to date. Set in Victorian England, the gothic tale examines the twisted circumstances surrounding the arranged marriage between young heiress Laura Fairlie (Olivia Vinall) and the much older Sir Percival Glyde (Dougray Scott). She and her half-sister Marian Halcombe (Jessie Buckley) become embroiled in a grand conspiracy that also involves a mentally ill woman dressed in white. Despite its period setting, the dangerous consequences of gender inequality make this story disturbingly relevant.

The update comes from writer Fiona Seres, who reteams with “Masterpiece” after adapting “The Lady Vanishes” in 2013 from the Ethel Lina White novel that also produced Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1938 film. Like that project, “The Woman in White” explores the frustrations of a society that doesn’t listen to women or believe in their peril.

Well if this isn’t the sweetest mistake ever!

A 2-year-old girl was ecstatic to meet a Seattle bride she thought was a real-life princess from her favorite storybook.

Kelsey Edwards and her daughter were walking down the street when the toddler noticed a woman dressed in all white — just like the one on the cover of her favorite book, “Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins.

Scott and Shandace Robertson who wed in February, were taking post-wedding photos with photographer Stephanie Cristalli when the little girl approached them.

“She was entranced and knew that Shandace was a princess, just like the lady on the book.

Ben Hardy and Jessie Buckley are set to join Dougray Scott and Charles Dance in a BBC One adaptation of Wilkie Collins' psychological thriller The Woman in White. The 5×60 series, which has begun filming in Northern Ireland, is produced by Origin Pictures and is adapted by Fiona Seres. David Thompson exec produces along with BBC's Sarah Stack while Sarah Curtis produces. Black Mirror and Humans helmer Carl Tibbetts is set to direct. Story follows Walter Hartright who…...

Farrell will be replacing Rubin as head of film and television.

Hannah Farrell is being promoted to head of film and television at Origin Pictures in the new year.

She will be replacing Ed Rubin, who is leaving the company. His new job is expected to be announced next week.

Farrell is currently running Origin’s development slate and has more than ten years experience at a senior level in development at Working Title and Ruby Films.

“Ed has played a key part in the founding and growth of Origin and we will all be very sorry to see him leave. He has been a great colleague and champion of our projects. I am pleased to say that we now have the strongest slate we have ever had across film and television and I want to thank Ed for his key part in this,” commented Origin’s CEO David Thompson.

“I am delighted...

The BBC has ordered a four-part TV adaptation of E. M. Forster's "Howards End" with screenwriter and playwright Kenneth Lonergan ("Gangs of New York," "You Can Count on Me") set to pen the adaptation.

The miniseries will begin production in the Summer with Playground, City Entertainment and KippSterEntertainment producing. No word on casting yet, but like the book the series will "explore the changing landscape of social and class divisions in turn-of-the-century England through the prism of three families."

The news was part of a slew of new programing that the BBC has just announced. Other works on the way include a four-part adaptation of Wilkie Collins' "Woman in White," a revenge drama, a contemporary African drama, a psychological thriller, a journalism drama and a look at Catholicism in contemporary Britain.

Source: THR...

The BBC has ordered a four-part TV adaptation of E. M. Forster's "Howards End" with screenwriter and playwright Kenneth Lonergan ("Gangs of New York," "You Can Count on Me") set to pen the adaptation.

The miniseries will begin production in the Summer with Playground, City Entertainment and KippSterEntertainment producing. No word on casting yet, but like the book the series will "explore the changing landscape of social and class divisions in turn-of-the-century England through the prism of three families."

The news was part of a slew of new programing that the BBC has just announced. Other works on the way include a four-part adaptation of Wilkie Collins' "Woman in White," a revenge drama, a contemporary African drama, a psychological thriller, a journalism drama and a look at Catholicism in contemporary Britain.

Source: THR...

Felicity Jones is mesmerising as a young actress whose affair with Charles Dickens is told in flashback in Ralph Fiennes's adaptation of Claire Tomalin's book

Ralph Fiennes may be the director and star of this handsomely mounted tale of the private life of Charles Dickens, but it's Felicity Jones who makes it fly. She plays Nelly Ternan, a young actress of indeterminate talent who captures the author's eye and heart, but wrestles (philosophically, morally, practically) with the idea of becoming his mistress.

Seen in flashback from the perspective of the now married Nelly, tormented by the memories of her affair, the story unfolds in chilly but engaging fashion, with Abi Morgan's typically insightful script taking its lead from Claire Tomalin's book.

At the heart of Nelly's dilemma is a gender inequality that Morgan's screenplay lays bare; the progressive "freedom" from marriage that Dickens and cohort Wilkie Collins...

The story of Charles Dickens and his secret mistress is no romance, and no modest costume drama, either. It’s a tale of women being practical because they had to be. I’m “biast” (pro): love the cast, love Dickens

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

I have not read the source material

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

His novels were full of life, and so was Charles Dickens himself… though not always in the most socially acceptable ways. Not for his restrictive Victorian times, and not necessarily in ways that would considered cool today, either. Dickens had a mistress for the last 12 years of his life, for instance, a fact dug up by biographer Claire Tomalin for her book The Invisible Woman, a relationship all but erased from history at the time in order to hide the scandal of it. Fittingly, then, this adaptation...

Review Ivan Radford 7 Feb 2014 - 06:13

The story of Charles Dickens' secret lover is a slow, understated affair, says Ivan. Here's his review of The Invisible Woman...

"You men live your lives while it is we who have to wait," says Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones) halfway through Ralph Fiennes' thoughtful study on love, loss and identity.

The Invisible Woman of the title, she is the secret sweetheart of Charles Dickens (Fiennes), whom he meets just as his career is at its peak - much to the apparent consternation of Nelly's mother, Mrs. Frances Ternan (a delightfully stern Kristin Scott Thomas). Falling for each other over theatre rehearsals of his play No Thoroughfare, the movie follows the couple's gradual romance in the face of society's conventions, which leave Nelly forgotten in the shade of the writer's public life.

That respectable Victorian veneer spreads to Fiennes' direction, swapping his hectic Coriolanus helming for a calmer,...

Director: Ralph Fiennes; Screenwriter: Abi Morgan; Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Felicity Jones, Kristin Scott Thomas, Michelle Fairley; Running time: 111 mins; Certificate: 12A

Ralph Fiennes directs himself in a smudgy portrait of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of his young mistress Nelly Ternan. As this so-called invisible woman, Felicity Jones has great presence and yet the passion that would drive Dickens to compromise his moral standing is never fully expressed and the "great man" remains a remote figure.

Ironically, the story (based on Claire Tomalin's biography of Nelly) begins with a Dickens quote, observing that "every human creature is a profound secret and mystery to every other". The intimacy that develops between Dickens and Nelly doesn't disprove this. When she first steps into his life - performing in a show written by his friend and fellow scribe Wilkie Collins (Tom Hollander) - he only takes notice when she delivers...

As the film of her biography of The Invisible Woman comes to the big screen, Claire Tomalin reveals what it feels like to have your book adapted

Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films. I had forgotten until I looked up old notes that I sold the film rights of my first book, a life of Mary Wollstonecraft: there was a lunch, a contract, a small sum of money, then nothing. Much the same happened with Mrs Jordan's Profession: a lot of interest and excitement, then it fizzled out (twice). And again with my life of Pepys. For years The Invisible Woman seemed destined to be yet another unmade film.

Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

After years of enlivening adapted work in front of the camera and on the stage, only recently has the prolific actor Ralph Fiennes taken to directing films; in 2011 he gave the world a version of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” which included the odd treat of watching Gerard Butler espouse the Bard’s words from his mouth, and a sporadically-lauded performance from Vanessa Redgrave.

Not long after the completion of that film, Fiennes has returned with a second directorial bid, “The Invisible Woman,” which finds a focus within the world of another praised artist of the word, but within a much more intimate setting.

“The Invisible Woman” is the story of Charles Dickens’ #2, a fan-turned-mistress named Nelly (played by Felicity Jones from “Like Crazy”). Providing a refreshing perspective to stories set within the social confines of the Victorian period, it is told from the specific recollection of Jones’ “other woman,” making...

Ralph Fiennes tackled Shakespeare for his directorial debut, and for his second effort he approaches the latter years in the life of Charles Dickens with The Invisible Woman, telling a story I'd never heard and one almost too unbelievable to be true. Yet, taking into account dramatic license, it actually is. Adapted from Claire Tomalin's book by Abi Morgan (Shame), this is an elegantly told story with some wonderful performances. Yet, for everything that's right about the film Fiennes has a tendency to linger on a scene or moment until all the air is sucked out of it and his approach is so traditional, following what almost seems like the "Paint by Numbers" book on period pieces, the film doesn't really have an identity of its own. This doesn't make it bad per se, but it does prevent it from rising up and being something truly outstanding. Set in...

Versatile actor best known for her roles in The Sound of Music and Of Human Bondage

In the Hollywood of the 1940s and 50s, when typecasting was an essential constituent of stardom, Eleanor Parker, who has died aged 91, never gained the recognition she deserved, because she refused to be pigeonholed. "It means I've been successful in creating the characters that I've portrayed – that I'm not just a personality who is seen in a variety of roles." Dana Andrews, her co-star in Madison Avenue (1962), called her "the least heralded great actress".

The 1957 film Lizzie is almost a reflection of her career. Parker plays three separate and distinct characters harboured inside one woman – the shy, self-effacing Elizabeth; the wanton, raunchy Lizzie; and the "normal" Beth – and switches brilliantly from one to the other. Parker was always able to be convincing in these three sorts of characters. She was naive as the girl...

Ralph Fiennes' first film as director was an grimy, gritty version of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. As his follow-up, he has looked to another literary master in the shape of Charles Dickens, but this time he's focusing on the writer himself rather than one of his books in a story of Dickens' secret mistress, Nelly Ternan. Take a look at the new trailer. brightcove.createExperiences();The film finds Dickens (Fiennes himself) already at the height of his fame and with a considerable fortune, married to Catherine (Joanna Scanlan) and raising a brood of children. But when he meets Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones), they strike up an affair - despite the frenzy of publicity that surrounds the wildly popular author wherever he goes. Hiding the affair from all but their closest friends - including Wilkie Collins (Tom Hollander) - and her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas), Dickens and Ternan try to make the best of a twisted situation.

★★☆☆☆ Revered British actor and director Ralph Fiennes returns to the London Film Festival this year with his second feature, The Invisible Woman (2013). Telling the story of the 'other woman' in Charles Dickens' life, Nelly Ternan, Fiennes appears to have improved his directing abilities little since Coriolanus (2011), offering up a tawdry biopic that's as stiff and stifling as a Victorian collar - and as frumpy as Queen Vic herself. Once again, Fiennes finds it only suitable to cast himself in the lead, this time as Dickens (ticking off yet another great historical figure), whilst the charming but miscast Felicity Jones plays the heroine of the piece.

We begin in Margate, 1883, as a black-clad Nell (Jones) stomps across the bleak sand dunes, returning to a boarding school that's busy preparing for a performance of one of Dickens' lesser-known plays, entitled No Thoroughfare. We then cut to Manchester, some years earlier. Here...

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes, here’s the first trailer for Sony Pictures Classics’ The Invisible Woman.

Nelly (Felicity Jones), a happily-married mother and schoolteacher, is haunted by her past. Her memories, provoked by remorse and guilt, take us back in time to follow the story of her relationship with Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) with whom she discovered an exciting but fragile complicity.

Dickens – famous, controlling and emotionally isolated within his success – falls for Nelly, who comes from a family of actors.

Nelly, then Ellen Ternan, is 18-years old and is performing with her mother, Mrs. Ternan (Kristin Scott Thomas), and sister Maria (Perdita Weeks), in Dickens’ adaptation of his friend Wilkie Collins’ (Tom Hollander) play, The Frozen Deep. With the eldest daughter Fanny (Amanda Hale), the Ternans are a cultured, lively family of touring actresses. Dickens is instantly drawn to them, particularly the young,...

Ralph Fiennes tackled Shakespeare for his directorial debut, and for his second effort he approaches the latter years in the life of Charles Dickens with The Invisible Woman, telling a story I'd never heard and one almost too unbelievable to be true. Yet, taking into account dramatic license, it actually is. Adapted from Claire Tomalin's book by Abi Morgan (Shame), this is an elegantly told story with some wonderful performances. Yet, for everything that's right about the film Fiennes has a tendency to linger on a scene or moment until all the air is sucked out of it and his approach is so traditional, following what almost seems like the "Paint by Numbers" book on period pieces, the film doesn't really have an identity of its own. This doesn't make it bad per se, but it does prevent it from rising up and being something truly outstanding. Set in...

Ralph Fiennes's second outing as director tells the affecting tale of Charles Dickens's relationship with Nelly Ternan

Ah – Margate. The wide open sands, the mewing gulls. The whipping breeze and the green sea. And, beyond the sands, of course, the dunes thick with grass, giving way to field upon field of rugged, rural idyll. And behind them, Margate itself: a chocolate box English village with quaint church and immaculate topiary.

The first scene of The Invisible Woman is the worst. Rarely has one location done such a poor impersonation of another as East Sussex does of Thanet at the start of Ralph Fiennes's second film behind the camera, as well as in front. Pity the poor tourists flooding off the train and on to the prom. They're going to think Margate's been even more buggered about in the past 150 years than it actually has been. More than...

David Morrissey returns to UK television this week, reprising his role of Murray Devlin in BBC One's Field of Blood - the latest outing for investigative reporter Paddy Meehan (Jayd Johnson) is The Dead Hour, a thriller set against the backdrop of the miners' strike and the changing face of 1980s journalism...

Digital Spy spoke to Morrissey about the two-part drama, the public's renewed interest in TV crime and what it's like splitting his time between the Us and Britain...

What should we expect from the new Field of Blood? Your character Murray has a new rival, of sorts...

"He doesn't have a rival... what he has is a boss! He's the editor of the paper [and] he's lucky enough to run the day-to-day [goings-on] of the paper, but it's come under new ownership now and a woman comes up from London... basically to put a rocket up their arse!

"The paper is failing,...

WikiLeaks drama kicks off a huge slate of major world premieres, including August: Osage County, Twelve Years a Slave, Mandela: A Long Walk to Freedom and new films for Brits such as Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes and Richard Ayoade, as well as the late James Gandolfini

• Toronto film festival: 20 tops picks in pictures

• The full Toronto film festival line-up

The Toronto film festival today offered audiences a glimpse of the future, as it unveiled a list of premieres which reads like a dry run for next year's Oscars ceremony.

Among the 13 galas and 52 special presentations revealed is The Fifth Estate, the drama based partly on the book about WikiLeaks by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, which will open this year's festival. The drama, directed by Bill Condon, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange with Daniel Brühl, David Thewlis, Stanley Tucci, Laura Linney and Dan Stevens in supporting roles.

The newly-announced 2013 Man Booker Prize chairman has welcomed graphic novels into the awards. Robert Macfarlane - an English fellow at Cambridge and a judge in 2004 - has said that he is keen for publishers to submit graphic novels, which he thinks would promote a "great discussion". He pointed out that 19th century works including those by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were published with illustrations, reports The Daily Telegraph. This week saw the Costa novel and biography prize shortlists both including graphic novels for (more)...

Having found critical acclaim with his directorial debut "Coriolanus" last year, Ralph Fiennes has been determined not to follow fellow Brit actors Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in letting years pass before he helms another picture. Even before his first picture was in theaters, Fiennes was planning his follow-up: an adaptation of Claire Tomalin's "The Invisible Woman," which tells the story of the relationship between author Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan, the much younger actress who became his lifelong mistress.

Penned by Abi Morgan ("Shame," "The Iron Lady"), shooting is underway, and now Empire has the first look at the film, with new stills of Fiennes as Dickens, and "Like Crazy" star Felicity Jones as Ternan. The cast also includes Kristin Scott-Thomas, as Ternan's mother, Tom Hollander as fellow novelist Wilkie Collins, and Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark in "Game Of Thrones") as Collins' common-law wife, and while it was...

Powell and Pressburger's Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp is typical of Archers Film and almost un-English in its audacity

You live abroad for a couple of decades and it's surprising which memories of the old country flicker into a different kind of focus. I'm not the nostalgic or homesick type, I haven't been home in six years. And yet two decades have made me feel more English than I ever did in England – and technically I'm not even English (I'm Scotch-Irish). I never read Trollope or Wilkie Collins in England, I never swooned exultantly over finding a Virago-edition Rosamond Lehmann novel, or a Two Ronnies video at a yard-sale.

Neither did I celebrate my birthday every year, as I do now, with a large scotch watching A Canterbury Tale alone, certain in the knowledge that when Eric Portman talks about the mysterious continuity of ancient tradition I will find myself,...

Chief executive of Film London, Adrian Wootton will give one of his Illustrated Film Talks focusing on Charles Dickens in film. The talk is part of Melbourne Celebrates Dickens in association with the Melbourne International Film Festival, held on Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 of August.

The announcement:

Former British Film Institute and London Film Festival Director Adrian Wootton returns to Melbourne for another series of his acclaimed Illustrated Film Talks, this year focusing on Charles Dickens and Film to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the author’s birthday.

The Illustrated Film Talks kick-off a wider Melbourne Celebrates Dickens season running from 17-26 August, as part of the global Dickens 2012 initiative, that combines events from the Melbourne International Film Festival, Miff 37ºSouth Market & Accelerator and The Wheeler Centre, as well as Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Acmi) and the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Presented exclusively in Melbourne by the Melbourne International Film...

It’s been a fine couple of months for Léa Seydoux. Coming off December’s big American debut (she was the icy assassin in Ghotocol), the French thespian has landed roles in some promising, occasionally high-profile projects – Michel Gondry‘s latest wack-fest, a drama with Tahar Rahim, and Beauty and the Beast, which co-stars Vincent Cassel. All for an actress who, just three months ago, was universally known as “the woman from the end of Midnight in Paris.”

Variety adds one more to the pecking order, with the news that Seydoux will be leading Blue Is a Hot Color, the latest feature from Abdellatif Kechiche (The Secret of the Grain). Taking its cues from a graphic novel by Julie Maroh, Blue is a dramedy centered on “a teenage girl who unexpectedly falls in love with another woman and faces her parents’ and friends’ judgment.” When it comes to that other woman — a part that,...

We’ve got a couple of casting stories to share with you today. First up, Tom Hollander (Hanna) is joining Ralph Fiennes in The Invisible Woman, the story of the secret love affair between Charles Dickens (Fiennes) and his mistress Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones). Empire reports that Hollander will be playing Dickens’ friend and frequent collaborator Wilkie Collins. The author co-wrote The Frozen Deep with Dickens, and it was on that production that Dickens first met Nelly, who was a theater actress. Fiennes is directing the pic, making it his follow-up after his directorial debut Coriolanus. Hollander is probably best known for the Pirates of the Caribbean films, but I thought he was incredible in last year’s underrated Hanna. Fiennes has assembled himself an exciting cast (Kristin Scott Thomas will play Dickens’ wife) and I’m excited to see the film come together. Production is set to start in April.

The Charles Dickens bicentenary continues to fling interesting projects at us, like Mr Smallweed hurling cushions at his wife. Along with BBC and BFI seasons and Mike Newell's Great Expectations, Ralph Fiennes is directing The Invisible Woman, in which he'll also play the author. Just set to join him is Tom Hollander, who'll be playing Dickens' friend and frequent collaborator Wilkie Collins.Calling The Invisible Woman a "Dickens biopic" is useful shorthand, but it also ironically plays into exactly what the the book and the film are about: Dickens' secret mistress Ellen "Nelly" Ternan, and her airbrushing from his official history.Ternan was a theatre actress (a year younger than Dickens' eldest daughter) with whom Dickens conducted an affair for the last thirteen years of his life. As a member of a less-than-respected profession, Nelly's social position was negligible, and Dickens went to inordinate lengths to keep the relationship out of the public eye.

Most recently seen as cross-dressing assassin Isaacs in Joe Wright's "Hanna," character actor Tom Hollander is now the latest addition to Ralph Fiennes' sophomore directorial effort, an adaptation of Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens-Nelly Ternan love story, "The Invisible Woman." Hollander will play fellow novelist Wilkie Collins, a frequent collaborator of Dickens whose play "The Frozen Deep" was the catalyst of Dickens and Ternan's first meeting -- he cast her, along with her mother and one of her sisters, for a performance in Manchester.  Fiennes will play Dickens himself, with rising star Felicity Jones as Ternan and Kristin Scott Thomas as Dickens' wife Catherine. Fiennes and baby-faced Jones, you ask? Yeah, Dickens was 45 when he began his relationship with the 18-year-old Ternan, who was actually a year younger than Dickens' eldest daughter, Mary. Fiennes will direct from a script...

Most recently seen as cross-dressing assassin Isaacs in Joe Wright's "Hanna," character actor Tom Hollander is now the latest addition to Ralph Fiennes' sophomore directorial effort, an adaptation of Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens-Nelly Ternan love story, "The Invisible Woman."

Hollander will play fellow novelist Wilkie Collins, a frequent collaborator of Dickens whose play "The Frozen Deep" was the catalyst of Dickens and Ternan's first meeting -- he cast her, along with her mother and one of her sisters, for a performance in Manchester. 

Fiennes will play Dickens himself, with rising star Felicity Jones as Ternan and Kristin Scott Thomas as Dickens' wife Catherine. Fiennes and baby-faced Jones, you ask? Yeah, Dickens was 45 when he began his relationship with the 18-year-old Ternan, who was actually a year younger than Dickens' eldest daughter, Mary.

Fiennes will direct from a script by Abi Morgan ("Shame"), which last we heard,...

The Host

Frances Fisher ("Titanic," "The Lincoln Lawyer") will star in Andrew Niccol's sci-fi feature "The Host" based on the book by "Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer.

Diane Kruger, Saoirse Ronan, Jake Abel and William Hurt star in the story of a few human survivors of a parasitic alien species called the Souls which have plagued Earth. [Source: Deadline]

Untitled Bigelow bin Laden Film

Lebanese actor Fares Fares ("Sage House," Snabba Cash") has been cast in Kathryn Bigelow's forthcoming film about Navy Seal Team Six’s take-down of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden for Annapurna Pictures.

It is not known what role Fares will play, though he is said to be "a good guy." [Source: Risky Biz Blog]

Not Safe for Work

Jj Feild ("Centurion"), Tom Gallop ("The Bourne Identity") and Christian Clemenson ("CSI: Miami") have joined the cast of the low-budget thriller "Not Safe for Work" at Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions.

The story...

With a trip to Paris in the 20s the subject of Woody Allen's Oscar contender, we've been wondering which bookish era we'd most like to revisit

Amid all the noise for The Artist, which looks set to clean up at the Oscars as it did at the Baftas, we on the Guardian books desk are gunning for another cinematic nostalgia-fest harking back to the same period. In the running for Best Picture, but with the bookies only giving it a 100/1 chance of winning, Midnight in Paris has been hailed as a return to form for Woody Allen, and described as a "perfect soufflé" by the Observer film critic Philip French. It might not have a performing dog, but it does have Papa Hemingway in a vest roaring "who wants a fight?" Like The Artist it is a warning against the dangers of romanticising the past as a Golden Age,...

The last time I sat down with Hammer president Simon Oakes Let Me In was about to roll into cinemas and he was in similarly upbeat fashion this time, just returned from the Paris premiere of Hammer’s latest film, The Woman in Black and with a big opening weekend in America behind him we talked about the secret of the film’s success and where Hammer is heading next.

Oakes was heavily involved with the film’s production, with one eye in the enduring legacy of one of the most famous studios in the world and the other on the new direction he is taking.

The Woman in Black is a good old-Fashioned ghost story, and a damn effective one. With a focus on the oppressive atmosphere and serving up carefully timed moments of genuine terror it calls to life the spirit of Robert Wise’s The Haunting and...

Adopting another's identity is seen as a melodramatic trick of the movies, like the evil twin in soap operas – but aren't we all imposture experts?

In The Big Picture, Romain Duris plays a prosperous Parisian lawyer who accidentally kills his wife's lover. And then, because he has always yearned to be an artist, he swaps identities with the dead man and starts a new life as a boho photographer. Taking the place of a dead person (as opposed to posing as a dead person, like Shaun of the Dead and friends) is a recurring motif of the noirish thriller, most memorably in Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, filmed by both Réné Clément (as Plein Soleil, starring Alain Delon at the peak of his male pulchritude) and Anthony Minghella.

Ripley murders the man whose identity he appropriates, but impersonators more often drift passively into imposture because circumstances enable or even demand it.

Editor: Stephen Jones.

Writers: Peter Atkins, Peter Crowther, Paul Finch, Christopher Fowler, Tim Lebbon, Paul McAuley, Kim Newman, John Llewellyn Probert, Mark Samuels, Pat Cadigan, Scott Edelman, Jo Fletcher, Robert hood, Tanith Lee, Lisa Morton, Sarah Pinborough, Jay Russell, Mandy Slater, and Michael Marshall Smith.

There seems to be a massive resurgence in everything zombie, or zombie-like nowadays. From books such as Craig Dilouie's The Infection, to film e.g. World War Z and even in digital games like "Dead Island," there is no shortage of undead material to get your rotten hands onto. Therefore, the zombie literature genre is a competitive market, one where the creme (cream) thankfully shambles to the top. This is the case with Stephen Jones' version of the coming zombocalypse. Released in paperback form December 7th, Zombie Apocalypse unites several horror fiction writers to believably tell tales of the undead. In no time, London falls,...

Director/writer: Gilles Marchand.

Black Heaven is a film from Gilles Marchand (Who Killed Bambi?), which centrally stars Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet and Louise Bourgoin. Released April 12th on various platforms, Black Heaven or L'Autre Monde (The Other World) warns viewers of those mermaids of the sea, who sometimes appear in film, seducing characters and enticing watchers to see what happens next. The beautiful Bourgoin plays the vixen, while Leprnce-Ringuet as Gaspard plays the soon to be trapped. This is a trap that you do not want to be caught in, as a suicide club turns to murder, when there are no more volunteers to cross over. Black Heaven is compelling for asking that age-old, and unaswerable question: is there life after death?

If you said yes, then you need to show this reviewer proof. However, the film is smart enough not to ask this question upfront, but this topic is interwoven into the compelling narrative.

Above is a teaser trailer for the Gothic ghost story The Woman in Black, not to be confused with William Wilkie Collins' mystery-romantic novel The Woman in White. In fact, starring Daniel Radcliffe (not in the title role), The Woman in Black is based on Susan Hill's 1983 novel about the ghost of a scorned woman out to get revenge on the residents of a remote village. Radcliffe plays a young attorney who has a close encounter (take a look at the clip) with the woman's ghost. Directed by James Watkins and adapted by Jane Goldman, The Woman in Black features Ciarán Hinds, Academy Award nominee Janet McTeer, and Shaun Dooley. CBS Films has just acquired the film, which should come out some time in 2012.

This week sees the release of Let Me In, the Matt Reeves directed adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel starring It-Girl Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee. It is the first major release from the rejuvenated Hammer, a name synonymous with cinematic horror.

Fans of the much loved Tomas Alfredson adaptation of the novel may have their concerns about the new film but it gets a lot right and sets the tone for a new direction for Hammer, and we sat down with CEO Simon Oakes to talk about the legacy and the future of Hammer – including The Woman in Black, starring Daniel Radcliffe.

HeyUGuys:

Hammer has an enormous and important legacy, and Let Me In represents a new direction for you, what’s your take on the future of Hammer?

Simon Oakes

I’ve been on the record as saying that when we bought Hammer we knew we had...